Sustainable Shelby has 18 months to prove its worth and to become, well, sustainable.

After a 21-month dormancy, the community’s first sustainability program has been resurrected by the Luttrell Administration with a federal grant.  Paul Young, a policy advisor to Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, has been named to head up the program and with only a year and a half of guaranteed funding, he’s drilled down to pick a number of priorities to get done.

If he’s successful, he will have done the most to move the needle on sustainability from a government perspective, but more importantly, he will have shown the value of the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Sustainability and its future could be ensured.

It was a good sign when Mayor Luttrell, in his speech after taking his oath of office last September, mentioned Sustainable Shelby as a priority (it was the only program he mentioned by name).  The good news is that Mayor Luttrell used his leadership to revive the program, and even better, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, who conceived of the sustainability plan when he was county mayor, is fully on board and a partner in the program.  Both mayors spoke at the re-launch of Sustainable Shelby, proving again why they’re getting the best reviews for a Memphis duo since Sam and Dave.

Scoring for the Big Win

Mr. Young, whose office is in the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development (which guided the process and whose staff wrote the implementation action steps), has done an encouraging job of sifting through the voluminous recommendations to identify the ones that can be accomplished in 18 months and still have impact.

Our favorite from the Sustainable Shelby report is the Great Neighborhood Score and we’re pleased that it’s on Mr. Young’s list.   The score would be based on the factors that make neighborhoods livable and successful, and when there are zoning requests and redevelopment plans, each one would be graded so that elected officials, as they make their decisions, would know the impact on the neighborhood.

It would change the current system of political transactions into an evaluative process, and it would arm elected officials with the facts and a context for what their decisions produce in the neighborhoods.  It would also likewise inform neighborhoods of the consequences of specific zoning and developments.

The recommendation was one of more than 150 strategies that were developed by a special team of city-county planners to flesh out the final 10 priorities set by the 130 people on seven Sustainable Shelby committees and from the countywide polling by Ethridge and Associates. The committees came up with more than 50 ideas and were winnowed down to the Top 10 in a vote in which the committee members’ ballots counted for half of the total and the public’s opinions through the polling accounted for the other half.

Top 10 List

From that vote, the top 10 priorities were set:

1  Create/reinvest in a great public realm that includes parks, schools, streets, plaza that are appropriately scaled – one size does not fit all

2  Create/reinvent in great neighborhoods – not merely subdivisions – that are “complete,” walkable, and provide a sense of neighborhood

3  Amend existing Technical Codes to eliminate obstacles to sustainable growth

4  Produce a comprehensive plan for Memphis and Shelby County that includes guiding principles that provide a clear, predictable, position vision

5  Design new public buildings to be flexible and adaptable to potential changes in future use

6  The public sector should emphasize the adaptive reuse of existing buildings

7  Amend local regulations for demolition activities to identify and enact incentives which encourage building reuse when feasible and material recycling when demolition is needed

8  Provide incentives for reclaiming declining property in established neighborhoods

9  Adopt comprehensive, community-based watershed management strategies as the driver of water quality, quantity, and habitat decisions

10   Create/enhance bike lanes and pedestrian facilities to identify routes that can easily be striped for bicycle lanes, ensure dedicated funding through capital improvement program for the above identified routes, and install “share the road” signs

The Agenda

Those results were released July, 2008, and the following year was spent developing specific strategies to accomplish them.  They were released September, 2009.  During that year, for the first time in recent memory, Mayor Wharton pulled together four planners to work on nothing but Sustainable Shelby and complemented them with two Division of Planning and Development leaders and consultants (our consulting company and Linx Consulting).

With the federal funding, Mr. Young – assisted by his staff member, planner Christine Donhardt – released a short-term work plan with 26 action items.

It would have been easy to set the bar lower for his new office, so we’re impressed that Mr. Young and Ms. Donhardt set an agenda that will require them to stretch – and get the complete cooperation of government departments and civic leaders – to accomplish the agenda they’ve set for themselves.

Plan of Work

While all the objectives on the work plan are important, we especially like the following:

*  Form a Green Building Task Force of real estate professionals to examine the existing building code and make recommendations on how it can become more green

*  Use sustainability as a guiding principle for all improvements to Shelby Farms Park in order to set the standard for our community

*  Allow private development LEED Neighborhood Development Certified Projects to be fast-tracked through the entitlement and permit process

* Aggressively pursue large scale redevelopment opportunities using either the existing Shelby County Land Bank or a newly created joint Memphis-Shelby County Land Bank

* Develop a public education and awareness campaign aimed at dispelling myths about the cost of green buildings and infrastructure

* Perform an Environmental Quality Assessment to determine the baseline air quality indicators for the region.

*  Implement a recycling program and design areas in government buildings where the public can bring recyclable materials

Getting Serious

*  Join ICLEI’s Carbon Disclosure Project in an effort to openly acknowledge the county’s carbon footprint

*  Establish relationships with local environmental justice offices to identify, communicate, and collaborate on environmental concerns that threaten neighborhoods

*  Require applications for entitlements or incentives to quantify the economic and environmental impacts/benefits of the proposed project

* Amend PILOT application processes to aware additional points to projects that incorporate existing vacant or underutilized buildings and that achieve specific sustainability benchmarks such as “LEED for Existing Buildings”

*  Work with the Shelby County Health Department to review and update their rules and regulations to remove any barriers that may be faced by local farmers in selling and offiering of their goods and produce in local farmers markets

* Create and maintain an online directory of local green businesses

* Revise current city and county purchasing policies to consider the total cost over the life of the goods, services, and equipment

Setting the Standard

* Require that all new publicly owned buildings greater than 10,000 square feet achieve a minimum of LEED Silver Certification

* Conduct energy audits on publicly owned buildings and rate their efficiency

*  When significant upgrades or modifications to an existing publicly owned building are made, compete a “LEED for Existing Buildings” checklist to assess the feasibility of incorporating sustainable design into the project

It’s a solid agenda for the next 18 months, and most of all, if Mr. Young can achieve it, the Office of Sustainability may get the chance – with the support of the city and county mayors – to tackle the entire agenda of the plan.